Pre-river
We left jhb around 17h30 in good spirits after fighting off all the boys who wanted to come along on the trip. The dinner stop in Potch saw much shinanigans as we relieved our youth on jumping castles and jungle gyms. This is also where serious injury #1 occurred... Chevonne grazed her elbow. A few hours, and much loudly-sung Bryan Adams, we found the campsite near the Groot Gat in Kimberley, at around 1am.
Day 1
We got on the river pretty late because we faffed about a bit and had to treat serious injury #2 belonging to Nikki who stabbed herself while pumping the boat. Drive round was assisted by the owner of the Caltex Garage by the put in (where we normally sleep on Beginners).
Turns out I should have checked the weather report, because a cold front arrived just in time for our paddle. We paddled into the worst headwind you could possibly imagine and I'm not joking when I say that the waves were in fact breaking in the faces of the front paddlers. When we stopped to rest we had to get out the boat and hold it else we would float upstream and undo in seconds what had taken plenty of minutes to accomplish. At one stage it was better to have someone pulling the boat from the front was more productive than having a lazy captain... so we did that for a while, until I thought it would be fun to get my foot stuck in rocks and bruise and swell up... serious injury #3.We stopped for lunch and Lis became proud owner of serious injury #4 when she tried to slice off her finger to put on her sandwich. We pushed on down to the old wagon bridge, and there was some fairly festive rapids just above there. Ok, mostly rapiiiiids, but one just before the bridge which was good times. At 4.30 we'd decided we'd had enough of the wind and made camp on the left bank. Crabs and Nikki made a much welcome fire and we all huddled round and then the most delicious food evooor was made (think by crabs again) with potatoes, creamed corn, and sausages. Then we spooned and tried to sleep...
Day 2
Woke up with frost everywhere... I was so cold I couldn't even sleep, so got up and made fire and thawed a little. Thanks to the cold we took our time in getting going while we waited for the sun. The wind had died down a little and we made good time getting to Hell's Gate, which we decided to run, but probably wasn't the best idea in the world.
Lunch was tuna mayo, which I discovered (as a non-tuna-eater) can be made to taste awesome with plenty of black pepper. We paddled the rest of thunder alley without too much excitement, save a girly scream upon being splashed by one of our seeming hardcore team members... no names mentioned.
We set up camp at Slypsteen (where we normally take out for beginners) and someone made comment about the strange water mark about 1m from the water level, so we pulled it above there just in case. Then we made fire, food and warm obs and the evening went a little pearshaped for some of our members... Crabs had a tc, Nikki got a burning log thrown on her lap and there was much singing and shinanigans.
Day 3
This is where it all went pearshaped... We found the quickest cure for a hangover is to lose a boat! We woke up, started the fire, then someone went to the boat for a crogan paddle... there was no boat!!! The water had risen 2,5m and carried it, and all the safety equipment off into the night. We found out later that this rise is caused by plenty of irrigation during the day being switched off at night and plus lots of upstream rain.
After long silent minutes, we split off into 2 groups... Lisa, Chevonne & I went looking for the boat and Sarah & Nikki walked out to fetch the car. I made no good plan for if we found the boat. We took food, maps, medical kit, the cellphone and warm gear to look for the boat. We found it about 5km downstream still with all its gear inside... God bless the flatness that is the Orange. To say we were happy would be an understatement! I went in search of signal to contact the others, but found none. We unwittingly abandoned our plan and paddled downstream to the take out, which we thought was about 8km downstream.
We had lunch just before where we thought the take out was and had another look see at the maps. When we got to the place the maps suggested the car should be we didn't stop because it did not in the slightest resemble where Lis had left the car. So we kept going, starting to doubt my map-reading skills. Eventually the decision was made that we had no idea where we were and possibly had missed the take out and needed to ask for directions... but there was no one to ask.
We got signal at 3.30 and spoke to Soekie and she said they had figured out what we were doing and were already waiting for us at the take out... but neither group knew we'd missed the take out already. We then lost signal again.
At 5.30 we found the first signs of life and went with our maps to ask for directions... the conversation between 2 second language afrikaans speakers is not an intelligent one. We eventually ascertained that there was a bridge "om die draai", and according to our maps could only be one bridge (the one with a weir in front of it incidentally). So we relayed this info to Soekie and Nikki when we got signal again and paddled off "om die draai". An hour later, that seemed further than expected. We were determined to paddle as long as daylight allowed and then walk to somewhere with light, even if we weren't that close to the bridge. In the last few rays of sunlight we saw the lights of an operational pump house and decided to paddle there and get help. Then Soekie phoned from the bridge to say they'd spotted us through binoculars and to keep coming and take out on the left bank. Before we had a chance to ask them to catch us before the weir (which we would definitely miss in the dark) we lost the phone to the Orange... not a high point for us.
When we thought we were as close to the weir as we could be, we took out in the thorn trees and walked towards the bridge. We found Soekie and Nikki and they said they would shine headlights well above the weir to indicate the take out. We paddled off, and the fishing lines just in front of the take out did not improve the mood much as we had to disentangle ourselves and get past them.
So after 35km and 10 hours of paddling, we were on dry land again and happy, though frikkin tired.
We got back to jhb around 5am and all in one piece.
Despite it being a bugger up, we were all very lucky and it can be called epic only because we got out of jail free.
Thanks to everyone involved
Here's to the next one...
Here's to the next one...
